10 Ways the Government Watches You

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In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the
size and scope of the U.S. national-security apparatus has
greatly expanded.

The trigger of that growth was the Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 — more commonly known as the
Patriot Act — which Congress overwhelmingly approved in the weeks
following 9/11.

Since its inception, the Patriot Act has been controversial, and
some argue that it is an attack on the freedoms protected in the
Bill of Rights. In May of this year, two Democratic members of
the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said "Americans would be
appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has
interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do."

Nevertheless,
President Barack Obama and Congress extended several key
provisions in the Patriot Act until 2015. While some in Congress
want to overturn the provisions or require the government to be
more honest about how it spies on its citizens, chances are we
will remain under the watchful and secretive eye of federal
agencies for the foreseeable future.

State and local governments also have surveillance measures in
place. Many products that make life a little easier, such using
an E-Z Pass card to zip through toll booths, feed information
back to the government.

Here are 10 ways government agencies watch us:

Roving John Doe wiretaps. One of the
controversial Patriot Act provisions reauthorized this past
spring permits roving John Doe wiretaps, which follow a "person
of interest" within a broad search warrant.

For example, instead of getting a warrant
to tap into a single phone line, the roving John Doe wiretap
allows law enforcement to tap any and all communication lines —
cellphone, landline, email, text messaging — a person of interest
may be using.

FBI monitoring of email and electronic
communications. The FBI implemented a system in the late
1990s known as Carnivore, which scanned emails en masse looking
for keywords. It's since been replaced by even more sophisticated
software.

"Carnivore uses a list of FBI-supplied keywords to sift through
email (maybe everybody's email) to find suspicious references to
call FBI attention to possibly nefarious conversations going on
across the Internet," explained Joe B. Vaughan, Jr., author of
"The Suburban Manifesto: How To Get City Hall To Do Exactly What
You Want" (CreatePress, 2010).

"The FBI would use this program to track terrorists, drug
traffickers, etc.," Vaughan said. "I had a conversation with an
FBI agent about this. He said that this technology is necessary
because of the impossible task of monitoring all of the email
traffic occurring daily by federal authorities. Carnivore sifts
email and when it finds matching keyword references, the FBI can
zero in on the sender and receiver and monitor their email
conversations more effectively."

License-plate cameras at intersections. In order
to crack down on drivers running red lights or committing other
traffic transgressions, many municipalities have installed
cameras at intersections.

"The offense, by the way, is usually never entered in the
driver's record, so their insurance rate usually will not
increase for the violation — just a way for cities to make more
revenue from drivers' mistakes,” said Vaughan.

Surveillance cameras in public places. In
August, Detroit officials announced that the city would be
operating 350 security cameras in the central business district,
joining dozens of American cities that use surveillance cameras
to help prevent crime.

Cameras are installed in areas that have a history of criminal
activities or in areas where crowds regularly gather — downtown,
public parks or subway stations, for example. The cameras also
record the everyday activities of law-abiding citizens, many of
whom are unaware they are being watched.

Geolocation tracking on cellphones. GPS on a
smartphone is one of life’s greatest inventions — in the palm of
your hand, you can get directions from Point A to Point B, or let
friends know your current location.

But that same GPS also lets law enforcement officials know where
you are. The American Civil Liberties Union has requested
information from 31 states for details about how law enforcement
uses cellphone location data and how frequently it is gathered.
The federal government has also admitted that it has the
authority to
track citizens using cellphone data.

Electronic toll collectors. For those who
frequently drive on toll roads on the East Coast, getting an
E-ZPass saves both time and the need to have a cup holder filled
with quarters for the commute to work. The same is true of
similar systems, such as TxTag in Texas or FasTrak in California.

All of these, as well more than a dozen other systems in North
America, work using
radio frequency identification (RFID). The passes communicate
with readers at tollbooths, and the readers both debit the
passes' prepaid balances and keep a record of when and where the
transaction occurred.

However, that recordkeeping raises privacy and security concerns.
Police can use electronic toll-collection information to track a
person’s whereabouts. Divorce lawyers can also use the records in
court.

"It's an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery," one
divorce lawyer told the Associated Press in 2007.

Business records. Section 215 of the Patriot Act
allows the FBI and other federal law-enforcement entities to
subpoena a business or person for any "tangible thing" related to
an authorized terrorism investigation. The FBI can ask for bank
statements, library records, medical records, business papers —
any paper trail left by the person or business. Law enforcement
does not have to have to show any probable cause to request the
information.

The "Lone Wolf" provision of the Patriot Act.
The government recognizes that terrorists, such as the Pakistani
man who tried to blow up Times Square in 2010, do not always
operate as part of a larger group, and such "Lone Wolves" are
currently considered one of the top terror threats. A "Lone Wolf"
provision was added to the Patriot Act in 2004 and permits the
government to conduct intelligence investigations without the
traditional burden of proof.

The "Secure Communities" initiative. The U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency works with
state
and city law enforcement to share resources on noncitizens
who have committed crimes. According to the ICE website, Secure
Communities "uses an already-existing federal information-sharing
partnership between ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) that helps to identify criminal aliens without imposing new
or additional requirements on state and local law enforcement.

"For decades, local jurisdictions have shared the fingerprints of
individuals who are booked into jails with the FBI to see if they
have a criminal record. Under Secure Communities, the FBI
automatically sends the fingerprints to ICE to check against its
immigration databases.

"If these checks reveal that an individual is unlawfully present
in the United States or otherwise removable due to a criminal
conviction, ICE takes enforcement action — prioritizing the
removal of individuals who present the most significant threats
to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime,
their criminal history, and other factors — as well as those who
have repeatedly violated immigration laws.”

However, a number of states and cities tried to opt out of Secure
Communities because of the concern that people would be deported
without criminal proceedings and that the program might infringe
on civil liberties. The federal government vetoed their efforts.

Biometric identification. Biometric
identification uses
a scan of a part of the body — a fingerprint, the iris of the
eye, or the voice, for example — as a verification tool. Instead
of typing in a password or swiping a card to log into a computer
or enter a building, you would use your body.

Many security experts believe this is the most secure type of
authentication available, and governments are taking advantage of
this technology. The Department of Homeland Security has
developed a standard for biometric identification for visitors to
the United States, and the Department of Defense is providing the
Army with a toolkit to do biometric identification in the field.